Royal project in Lithuania: everyone is invited to buy a castle

EN.DELFI

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

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Royal project in Lithuania: everyone is invited to buy a castle

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In childhood, almost everyone dreams to know how the royal life feels like. Now the community of World Economic Forum Global Shapers Vilnius gives Lithuanians such an opportunity by inviting them to invest in Raudonė Castle, where formerly the Raudonė’s Secondary School was located, a press release from the forum states.

In September, this school is being closed because of rapidly decreasing number of students. The closure of school implies that the Central Government funding, dedicated to education expenses, will be suspended. Consequently, the municipality does not have enough funds to finance the building maintenance. Therefore, Raudonė Castle urgently needs new investors whose financial backing would allow renovating the building in order to change its function.

"Naturally, we raised the question whether we could somehow contribute to the problem solution? Then we realised that we could use crowd-funding to allow people to collect the required amount of money to restore the building" – said Zygimantas Zabieta, one of the project organisers. They are going to implement this unique idea of crowd funding by using the revolutionary blockchain technology.

"Blockchain technology is a simpler alternative of shared ownership, ensuring democratic owners' participation in the management of the building as well as the highest level of transparency. We want to employ this technology and tokenize Raudonė Castle so that people from all around the world could buy these tokens. The purchase of tokens is an investment, which would enable investors to participate in decision-making as well as to gain income if castle is performing successfully in economic terms. In short, the token buyer gets dividends and takes part in the building management. As you can see, this process is quite simple," Ž. Zabieta explains.

During the blockchain conference "The Pillar Unconference 2018", taking place in "Vilnius Grand Resort" in 15-22nd July, the community of WEF Global Shapers Vilnius is holding a workshop "First Blockchain Castle". There, together with blockchain experts, the project organisers will attempt to answer three key questions. First, how should the practical aspects of the castle's tokenization be organized? Second, what should be the castle's function? Lastly, how could the great public's attention be drawn to this project? "We hope that the workshop attendees will actively share their ideas and will help us come up with the economic activity for Raudonė Castle. Importantly, by doing this new economic activity, the building should become not only a culturally important object but also the income source for both Jurbarkas municipality and its dwellers," claimed the project co-author.

This initiative without its precedents in the world could become a historical event for Lithuania. "Possibly, the representatives of the Dubai municipality would come to Lithuania to see how the tokenization of the real estate was developed," said Ž. Zabieta. As he stated, the main principle of employing blockchain technology would be applicable not only for saving Raudonė Castle, but also for financing other state projects. "For example this system would enable people to collect money and build a national football stadium," said the project initiator.